Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular HappeningsMacaulay, Rose
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Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings
Macaulay, Rose
Detective and mystery stories; Geneva (Switzerland) -- Fiction
On this, the first morning of the Assembly, telegrams shot in in a
regular barrage, and nearly every delegate stopped several. Many came
from America. The trouble about America was that every nation in the
League had compatriots there, American by citizenship, but something
else by birth and sympathy, so that the Ukrainian congregation of
Woodlands, Pa., would telegraph to request the League to save their
relations in Ukraine from the atrocities of the Poles, and the Polish
settlement in Milwaukee would wire and entreat that their sisters and
their cousins and their aunts might be delivered from the marauding
Ukrainians, and Baptist congregations in the Middle West wired to the
Roumanian delegation to bring up before the Assembly the persecution
of Roumanian Baptists. And the Albanian delegate (a benign bishop) had
telegrams daily from Albania about the violation of Albanian frontiers
by the Serbs, and the Serbian delegate had even more telegrams about
the invasions and depredations of the Albanians. And the German and
Polish delegates had telegrams from Silesia, and the Central and South
American delegates had telegrams about troubles with neighbouring
republics. And the Armenians had desperate messages from home about
the Turks, for the Turks, despite the assignment to Armenia of a
national home, followed them there with instruments of torture and of
death, making bonfires of the adults, tossing the infants on pikes,
and behaving in the manner customarily adopted by these people towards
neighbours. There is this about Armenians: every one who lives near
them feels he must assault and injure them. There is this about Turks:
they feel they must assault and injure any one who lives near them. So
that the contiguity of Turks and Armenians has been even more
unfortunate than are most contiguities. Neither of these nations ought
to be near any other, least of all each other.
Meanwhile the Negro Equality League wired, "Do not forget the coloured
races," and the Constructive Birth Control Society urged, "Make the
world safe from babies" (this, anyhow, was the possibly inaccurate
form in which this telegram arrived), and the Blackpool Methodist
Union said, "The Lord be with your efforts after a World Peace,
watched by all Methodists with hope, faith and prayer," and the Blue
Cross Society said, "Remember our dumb friends," and Guatemala (which
was not there) telegraphed, "Do not believe a word uttered by the
delegate from Nicaragua, who is highly unreliable." As for the
Bolshevik refugees, they sent messages about the Russian delegation
which were couched in language too unbalanced to be made public either
in the Assembly Journal or in these pages, but they would be put in
the Secretariat Library for people to read quietly by themselves. This
also occurred to a telegram from the Non-Co-operatives of India, who
wired with reference to the freedom of their country from British
rule, a topic unsuited to discussion from a world platform.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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